Amaro Francisco, Shuman Howard
Departamento de Genética, Fisiología y Microbiología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
Department of Microbiology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Methods Mol Biol. 2019;1921:55-78. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-9048-1_4.
Predation by protozoa provides a strong selective pressure for Legionella to develop and maintain mechanisms conferring resistance to digestion and ability to replicate within both amoebae and mammalian macrophages. Here we describe how to isolate environmental protozoa that prey on virulent Legionella. These protists are extremely useful models to study the cellular mechanisms employed by Legionellae to survive and grow in its natural environment. We present here procedures that are available to study the interactions between environmental protozoa and Legionella and thus increase our current understanding of Legionella virulence and the infection process.
原生动物的捕食为军团菌施加了强大的选择压力，促使其发展并维持赋予抗消化能力以及在变形虫和哺乳动物巨噬细胞内复制能力的机制。在此，我们描述了如何分离捕食致病性军团菌的环境原生动物。这些原生生物是研究军团菌在其自然环境中生存和生长所采用的细胞机制的极为有用的模型。我们在此介绍可用于研究环境原生动物与军团菌之间相互作用的程序，从而增进我们目前对军团菌毒力和感染过程的理解。
